224. The disincarnate spirit undoubtedly comprehends all languages, because all languages are the expression of thought, and it is thought that a spirit comprehends; but, in order for him to transmit thought, an instrument is indispensable: the medium is that instrument. The soul of the medium, which receives the communication of the disincarnate spirit, can only transmit that communication through his bodily organs; and those organs cannot be so flexible to an unknown tongue as to the tongue with which he is at present familiar. A medium, who understands only his native tongue, may, occasionally, be made to reply in some other tongue, if it pleases the communicating spirit to perform that feat; but spirits, who find human language too slow for their rapidity of thought, and who abridge that language as much as possible, chafe under the mechanical resistance which they encounter in their mediums, and therefore do not always give themselves the trouble to speak in the language that may be desired by us. For the same reason, a medium, during his novitiate, writing slowly, and with difficulty, even in his native tongue, generally obtains only short and simple answers; the spirits themselves recommending questioners to put only very simple questions when they employ the medianimity of a beginner. For the treatment of questions of high import, spirits require a fully developed medium, presenting no mechanical obstacle to their action. An author does not employ, as his amanuensis, a child who is only learning to spell. A good workman does not like to work with ill-made or unsuitable tools.

To sum up the foregoing statements: - With few exceptions, a medium transmits the thought of the communicating spirit by such mechanical means as are at his disposal, and the expression of the thought thus transmitted is necessarily, in most cases, more or less impaired by the imperfection of those means; for which reason the uncultured medium, though he may be made to transmit the grandest, sublimest, most philosophical thoughts, will usually do so in language reflecting his lack of culture. This fact furnishes an answer to the objection sometimes brought against spirit-messages, on the score of the incorrectness of style and orthography observable in some of them, but which proceed as often from the medium as from the spirit. It is puerile to attach undue importance to trifling and superficial imperfections of this kind, and no less puerile to take pains to reproduce such inaccuracies with minute exactness, as we have sometimes seen done, under the impression that, coming from a spirit, they ought to be respected. Such inaccuracies of diction may therefore be corrected without scruple; those, at all events, which do not mark, on the part of the communicating spirit, some distinguishing characteristic that it may be useful to preserve as a proof of identity. For instance, we have seen a spirit constantly write the name James as Jame (without the s) when speaking to his grandson, because he had been in the habit of writing it thus during his earthly life, although the latter, who was his medium, knew perfectly well how to write his own name.